Alienware M14x, M17x and M18x get Ivy Bridge

Alienware has thrown Intel’s new 3rd-gen Core i5 and i7 processors at its updated M14x, M17x and M18x notebooks, promising a roughly 20-percent boost in power from the new Ivy Bridge architecture. It’s the second refresh for the trio of gaming laptops in under a month, with Intel slotting in new mSATA caching drives and boosted graphics in mid-March. Plus, there’s a new Alienware deal with Electronic Arts.

The EA deal will see Battlefield 3 gamers get custom lighting effects when playing the title on their Alienware notebook. The Dell-owned company offers up an AlienFX API to allow developers to hook gameplay events into the LED backlighting on the logos, keyboard and trackpad; in Battlefield 3, that will include “unique loading and menu and player health lighting effects.” There’s also be an exclusive Alienware Arena dog tag.

Alienware has used mSATA solid-state storage to boost performance without the huge cost of a traditional SSD. Various sizes of flash memory paired with regular hard-drives can be used to speed up Windows 7 boot times and provide quicker access to commonly-used files.

The Alienware M14x, M17x and M18x with 3rd Generation Core i5 and i7 options are available to order from today. They’re priced from $1,099/£999, $1,499/£1,299 and $1,999/£1,699 respectively in the US and UK. Full specs are below.